“The attack on Syria indicates that the Trump administration is now fully under the control of the neoconservative-controlled foreign policy establishment, and that any inclination the Trump administration may have ever had toward altering US foreign policy has been abandoned…,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told Tasnim in an interview.
The following is the full text of the interview.
Some refreshing comments from socialist and Russia Today commentator Caleb Maupin. While Maupin is a socialist and I am an anarchist, this was more or less the same position I began taking in the 1990s and 2000s during the anti-globalization and antiwar eras, i.e. that the revolutionary left needed to reach out and build bridges to the populist and antiwar right. It’s interesting to see the anti-imperialist left actually developing such an outlook today, and being denounced as “fascist” for doing so (as I was back in the day). I have since moved away from advocating left/right hybrid movements (which I don’t consider to be viable given the level of polarization that exists at present) in favor of a “revolutionary centrist” approach (i.e. opposing the establishment center while rejecting the extremes of Left and Right, such as anarcho-leftoids and Communists or alt-right and neo-fascists), but I wish the anti-imperialist left good luck with their efforts.
The rallies against bombing Syria are saying: “Stop Trump’s War” & “March to Trump Tower.”
Do these people live under a rock? There is widespread opposition to this war among the broad masses of people, but not among “Stop Trumpers.”
Do they not see that Tucker Carlson is challenging the narratives for bombing Syria, while Democrats are accusing Trump of not being hard enough against Russia and Assad?
Average Americans have isolationist and populist sentiments more than ever. However, the people who run the anti-war movement and dominate the socialist and communist organizations have no interest in recruiting them. Instead, they hope to convince the Rachel Maddow fans! Its so sad to watch.
Some relevant comments from leading Rothbardian libertarian Tom Woods on Syria:
“Well, Woods’s Law is on full display these days:
No matter whom you vote for, you always wind up with John McCain.
It’s as if the President, in his scramble to imitate Jeb! and Graham, forgot that he’s the one who spared us those dolts.
What drives me especially bonkers is to hear conservatives, of all people, cheering for war in Syria.
Here are people who (are supposed to) believe in the fallen condition of humanity, have finite political goals (not “an end to evil,” in David Frum’s preposterous, anti-conservative formulation), and leave the utopianism to the Left.
They are likewise supposed to understand how precarious is the human condition, and be appalled at the hubris of the wise planner who thinks societies can be taken apart and reassembled like Tinkertoys.
And if they’re going to pretend that they just want to respond to a “gas attack” — come on.
Even if such an attack had been perpetrated by Assad, how can I be morally lectured to by people who have connived at the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen? First Obama supporters, then Trump himself, aided or turned a blind eye to Saudi outrages there. (Trump’s belated, feckless objection amounted to nothing.)
This is an interesting blog with an extensive amount of commentary about Syria. This blogger seems to hold to some kind of anti-Assad, Syrian leftist opposition perspective, and seems a bit soft on Western intervention. One thing I am not getting from this blog is an explanation of how the overthrow of Assad would not result in anything other than the coming to power of a Salafist regime, which is clearly what the Western powers, and their allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, want. When the Iraq War began in 2003, there were some pro-intervention liberals and leftists making the argument that the war was a “war against fascism” or whatever, and we know how that turned out.
By Leila Al-Shami
Once more the western ‘anti-war’ movement has awoken to mobilise around Syria. This is the third time since 2011. The first was when Obama contemplated striking the Syrian regime’s military capability (but didn’t) following chemical attacks on the Ghouta in 2013, considered a ‘red line’. The second time was when Donald Trump ordered a strike which hit an empty regime military base in response to chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. And today, as the US, UK and France take limited military action (targeted strikes on regime military assets and chemical weapons facilities) following a chemical weapons attack in Douma which killed at least 34 people, including many children who were sheltering in basements from bombing.
The first thing to note from the three major mobilisations of the western ‘anti-war’ left is that they have little to do with ending the war. More than half a million Syrians have been killed since 2011. The vast majority of civilian deaths have been through the use of conventional weapons and 94 per cent of these victims were killed by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance. There is no outrage or concern feigned for this war, which followed the regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators. There’s no outrage when barrel bombs, chemical weapons and napalm are dropped on democratically self-organized communities or target hospitals and rescue workers. Civilians are expendable; the military capabilities of a genocidal, fascist regime are not. In fact the slogan ‘Hands off Syria’ really means ‘Hands off Assad’ and support is often given for Russia’s military intervention. This was evident yesterday at a demonstration organized by Stop the War UK where a number of regime and Russian flags were shamefully on display.
The Left dropped the ball and the “far right” picked it up and ran with it. Now the Left is pissed. What did they expect? In the past, I have heard leftists (mostly the “anti-hater” types) talk about how the far right threatened to “take the game away from the left” (by actually talking about real issues like international conflict, class conflict, and state repression as opposed to nonsense like “microagressions”). Now, it’s happening.
By Jason Wilson
The Guardian
Despite Iraq the left has mounted no serious opposition to Syrian involvement – so why is the right now filling those shoes?
In 2002 and 2003, millions of left-leaning demonstrators crowded cities around the world to protest against the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. All the while, conservative media, along with large segments of the liberal press, beat the war drums, encouraging the Bush administration in its project of regime change.
But 15 years later, as the US edges towards a greater involvement in Syria, there is as yet no progressive, mass anti-war movement. For now, the most prominent opponents of Middle East intervention are all on the right, while leading Democrats are entirely on board with military intervention in the Middle East.
Press TV. Listen here.
If the United Sates were to launch an airstrike on Syria, it would certainly escalate the hostilities between Washington and Moscow and even could develop into a direct military confrontation between the two powers, says Keith Preston, an American political analyst in Virginia.
Russia has said that threats by the US and France to launch a military aggression against Syria violate the UN Charter, calling on the West to “seriously consider” the consequences of such intimidation.
“At the highest level, the presidents of the United States and France threatened a tough reaction, with the use of force against Syria. I would like to note that the threat of using force against a UN member state is a gross violation of the charter of this organization,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
The US and its allies have been threatening Damascus with military action since April 7, when a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, reportedly killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.
The possibility of an attack grew larger on Wednesday, after Trump warned Russia, Syria’s key supporters in the fight against foreign-backed militancy, to “get ready” to shoot down American missiles over Syria soon.
But Trump tempered those remarks on Thursday, saying the US response could be “very soon or not so soon at all!”
Washington, DC (April 13, 2018) – U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has just announced he will introduce a bill to end taxes on capital “gains” that are simply a result of inflation.
Cruz’s inflation-indexing bill seeks to “expand economic growth and encourage more investment into the economy, helping create more opportunities for hardworking Americans.”
“If you invest a thousand dollars, and then ten years later you sell whatever you have invested in for two thousand dollars, right now, you are taxed on that full gain, ignoring inflation, and ignoring the fact that inflation has eaten away a big chunk of that gain,” Sen. Cruz said.
The Sound Money Defense League lauded the measure for acknowledging the problem created by the official policy of devaluing the purchasing power of the Federal Reserve Note “dollar” and for taking a reasonable first step to addressing it.
“Because of inflation, much of what is taxed as capital gains is not a real gain, but rather a nominal gain created by the Federal Reserve System through its policy of serial devaluation,” said Jp Cortez, Policy Director at the Sound Money Defense League.
“We praise Senator Cruz for advancing a bill that addresses a symptom of Federal Reserve currency debasement,” continued Cortez. “However, the fundamental solution is a return to sound money in America, i.e. gold and silver, as intended by our nation’s Founding Fathers.
“Until we strip central bankers of their abusive power to create money out of thin air, our nation’s investors, savers, pensioners, and wage-earners will be robbed of their assets through the insidious inflation tax.”
The Sound Money Defense League is an Idaho-based public policy group working nationally to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money. Visit Soundmoneydefense.org for more information.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement downplays threats of a military action against Syria, ruling out a potential direct confrontation between the US and Russia or a wider war in the Arab country.
“We rule out the situation developing into a direct American-Russian clash or a wide state of war,” Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem told Lebanese daily al-Joumhouria in an interview published on Friday.
“The conditions do not point to a total war happening … unless (US President Donald) Trump and (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu completely lose their minds,” he said.
Hezbollah, along with Russia and Iran, has been helping the Syrian army in its battles against terrorists.
The US and its allies have been threatening Damascus with military action since April 7, when a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, reportedly killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.
The possibility of an attack grew larger on Wednesday, after Trump warned Russia, one of Syria’s key supporters in the fight against foreign-backed militancy, to “get ready” to shoot down American missiles over Syria soon.
The US, however, later muddied the threats as a number of its major European allies, including Germany, said they would not join such a military action.
Syria has firmly denied any links to the chemical attack. Both Moscow and Damascus have invited the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to send a fact-finding mission to Douma and investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons there.
Damascus has destroyed its entire chemical weapons stockpile under a UN-brokered program overseen by the OPCW.
Syrians shrug off US threats
On Thursday, some Syrians in the capital Damascus shrugged off the possibility of a US strike against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
A Damascus resident said “Russia will respond” and another one dismissed the idea of missile attack saying US is “afraid of Russia and China.”
“They are only threats. They always threaten us. It is not the first time. It is not something new. We got used to it. Russia will respond,” said Eugenie Saadeh.
This interview is from 2016 but it’s highly relevant to what is going on now.
Press TV. Listen here.
The US is seeking to further escalate the years-long conflict in Syria through its so-called “Plan B,” in a bid to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power as his government does not bend to America and Israel’s will, says a Virginia-based author and political commentator.
Floated for the first time by US Secretary of State John Kerry in February, US officials are advocating a so-called “Plan B” which seeks to provide vetted “moderate” militants with necessary weapons to launch attacks against Syrian government aircraft and artillery positions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Speaking to Press TV on Wednesday, Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of AttacktheSystem.com, said such reports signal Washington’s appetite for more destruction in the war-torn country.
“It looks like that the American government is now trying to escalate the war in Syria,” Preston said.
He said the ongoing truce in Syria that was mediated by Russia and the US and went into effect on February 27, has eased the conflict to a degree but Washington seems to be unhappy with this.
Preston said there is no such thing as “moderate rebels” in Syria and Washington is in fact seeking to escalate the conflict by providing anti-government groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with heavier weaponry.
“Looks like the motivation for this is that the United States really is bent on overthrowing the government of President Assad,” he argued.
“The Assad government is an independent government that is not integrated into the system of American client-states and puppet states in the region and that is the real issue that the Americans have with President Assad,” he explained.
The analyst said Syria’s non-recognition of Israel is another major reason for Washington’s hostility towards the Damascus government.
Preston also referred to the ongoing parliamentary elections in Syria, saying it is interesting to hear these reports at such critical times when a political solution to the years-long conflict seems closest than ever.
More than 7,300 polling stations have been set up across the government-held regions in the country. Syrian voters are electing members of the 250-seat parliament out of some 3,500 candidates.
The preparations for the “Plan B” were discussed at a secret gathering of intelligence chiefs in the Middle East before the ceasefire went into effect and in exchanges between intelligence services, the newspaper said.
During those sessions, the CIA gave assurances to allies that they would be given approval to expand arms shipments to Syria’s “moderate” militants.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 270,000 people have been killed in the conflict. Some reports, however, put the death toll at as high as 470,000
This looks to be an interesting new book from a leading antifascist writer (and critic of yours truly).
A few of the comments in the description of this book highlight the basis of the ongoing conflict between myself and the anarcho-left/antifa milieu.
Disloyalty to the state is a key dividing line within the U.S. right…That includes white nationalists who advocate replacing the United States with one or more racially defined “ethno-states.” But it also includes the hardline wing of the Christian right, which wants to replace secular forms of government with a full-blown theocracy; Patriot movement activists who reject the federal government’s legitimacy based on conspiracy theories and a kind of militant libertarianism; and some smaller ideological currents.
An interesting article from the antifascist side describing the growing split between the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist factions of the Left.
By Charles Davis
NewPol.Com
“An Orwellian destruction of meaning and words — so many absurdities; absurdities stacked on absurdities,” Alexander Reid Ross told me. Fox News had just declared him the leader of a nasty smear campaign, aided by the “far-left Southern Poverty Law Center,” that aimed to make television personality Tucker Carlson and his guests out to be “fascists.” So far, so normal, but it was the specific charge that shocked and awed the communist author who once lived in Russia: “McCarthyism,” with white nationalists’ favorite host, and those who come on his show to agree with him, the victims.
Ross’s ironic sin, which he spoke to me about in an hour-long phone call, was writing a series of articles about a topic he wrote the book on: fascist entryism, or efforts to normalize far-right politics and infiltrate left-wing discourse. In particular, he noted the shared affinity for the Kremlin and its talking points among the fringe right and a subsection of leftists, and he detailed how Russian state media was facilitating a popular, “anti-establishment” front against the foreign and domestic enemies of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad, platforming right-wing nationalists alongside those who self-identify as progressive internationalists.
Thus far, Tucker Carlson has been, to my knowledge, the only mainstream media figure to challenge the System’s narrative on Syria.
It’s interesting how the Republican Senator being interviewed said, “If you care about Israel…” the first time he opened his mouth. What if you don’t care about Israel?
It also seems to be the case that Syria has exacerbated the already deep rift between the anti-imperialist left and the anti-fascist left. The anti-imperialist left are primarily interested in opposing imperialist attacks on nations that refuse to be incorporated into the Anglo-American-Zionist-Wahhabi axis, opposing the escalation of hostilities with Russia and China, preventing war with Iran and Syria, opposing the Saudi genocide in Yemen, opposing Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, etc. However, the anti-fascist left has has largely adopted the anti-Russian narrative of the CIA-neocon-DNC-MSM axis, regards Russia as the de facto headquarters of world fascism, takes what amounts to the State Department line on Syria, hesitates to criticize Israel out of fear of fueling anti-Semitism, and is mostly worried about “red-brown alliances,” “left-right crossovers,” and “fascist entryism.” Yes, I am oversimplifying a bit, but this seems to be the general pattern that is evolving.
Looking over the Twitter feeds of leading antifa and/or anarcho-leftoids, I see that Spencer Sunshine and Kevin Carson apparently have had nothing to say about Syria, while Goofy Gillis has merely retweeted an Alexander Reid-Ross tweet crying about “red-brown alliances” and another tweet lambasting Tucker Carlson. Also in circulation in antifascist circles now is this lengthy piece by an anarcho-leftoid/antifa essentially accusing anyone among the Western left that takes anti-imperialism seriously of being a partner in fascism. For instance, this article has been reposted on the Three Way Fight blog. Reminds me of all those conspiracy charts purporting to show the link between Jewish bankers, satanists in the Vatican, lizard people, chemtrails, 9/11and the flat earth.
It appears that on international relations, a neoconservative-liberal internationalist-antifascist axis is brewing.
I agree with the author of this article that there’s likely no compromise in the Red/Blue tribal civil war, and that it will likely the Blue tribe that wins with the US increasingly becoming a one-party state under the Democrats. Although I don’t share his optimism about the outcome of all that given that his preferred model, California, is developing a Third World class system (see Joel Kotkin here and here).
By Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira
Medium
he next time you call for bipartisan cooperation in America and long for Republicans and Democrats to work side by side, stop it. Remember the great lesson of California, the harbinger of America’s political future, and realize that today such bipartisan cooperation simply can’t get done.
In this current period of American politics, at this juncture in our history, there’s no way that a bipartisan path provides the way forward. The way forward is on the path California blazed about 15 years ago.
In the early 2000s, California faced a similar situation to the one America faces today. Its state politics were severely polarized, and state government was largely paralyzed. The Republican Party was trapped in the brain-dead orthodoxies of an ideology stuck in the past. The party was controlled by zealous activists and corrupt special interests who refused to face up to the reality of the new century. It was a party that refused to work with the Democrats in good faith or compromise in any way.
The solution for the people of California was to reconfigure the political landscape and shift a supermajority of citizens — and by extension their elected officials — under the Democratic Party’s big tent. The natural continuum of more progressive to more moderate solutions then got worked out within the context of the only remaining functioning party. The California Democrats actually cared about average citizens, embraced the inevitable diversity of 21st-century society, weren’t afraid of real innovation, and were ready to start solving the many challenges of our time, including climate change.
It’s interesting to see various far left tendencies coming out and saying what I have been saying about the Western Left for years.
“Four of the most prominent pseudo-left websites—Jacobin magazine, which is closely connected to the Democratic Socialists of America; Socialist Worker, the online newspaper of the International Socialist Organization; the website of Socialist Alternative; and International Viewpoint, the magazine of the Pabloite, ex-Trotskyist United Secretariat, have written next to nothing about the growing danger of a major world war.
Given the issues at stake, any genuinely progressive, let alone socialist, organization would subject the campaign for war against Russia and Syria to intensive criticism and analysis, in order to educate the working class and inure it against war propaganda.
Jacobin, Socialist Worker, etc., however, are not left-wing publications. They are right-wing, pro-imperialist and pro-capitalist. In the US, they function as political auxiliary organizations of the Democratic Party, which is spearheading the offensive against Russia, the campaign against Assange, and the drive to censor the Internet.
These tendencies articulate the interests of a narrow layer of privileged upper-middle-class academics, professionals and trade union functionaries whose rising incomes over the past thirty years, even as the working class has seen its living standards collapse, have led it into direct support for American imperialism. Since the NATO bombing of the Balkans in the 1990s, the pseudo-left has supported a whole series of “humanitarian” imperialist interventions and imperialist-backed separatist and nationalist movements.”
By Tom Hall
World Socialist Website
The Stark Truth. Listen here.
Check out Decay’s blog, his writings for Brandon Adamson’s AltLeft.com, and Twitter profile.
Topics:
The Orientation of D E C A Y’s Political Views
DECAY’s outlook on human dynamics can be described as “right-wing”, but without stereotypical “right-wing” stances, such as laissez-faire free-market economics or moral traditionalism
DECAY’s left Wing stances on environmental and public health regulations, worker and consumer protections, and a social safety net
Alt-Apoliticism
The Bearer of “Trad” News
A post American perspective
Predicting Future Trends
Independent City States
Where Should One Live?
Urban neighborhoods, Sreetcar Suburbs, Retrofitted Suburbs, Small Towns, College Towns, and the reemergence of the village model, where people live in close proximity to where they work, shop and recreate
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and thoughts on the region’s cities, suburbs, and wilderness
The need for a balance between urbanism and wilderness
Retro Futurism and an affinity for 80’s Synthwave
This show is brought to you by Robert Stark’s Paintings and his novel Journey to Vapor Island
Absolutely correct. Ultimately, the battle is not between East and West, which merely represent different wings of the international elite. Nor it is about Democrats and Republicans, which merely represent different wings of the domestic elite. Nor is it about the “far left” or the “far right,” both of which are merely ruling classes in waiting.
By Caitlin Johnstone
Steemit
I don’t write about socialism much. I’ve been a socialist my entire life and always vote as far left as the ballot will let me go, and that worldview certainly informs the way I think and write about the world issues I tend to focus on. But I don’t write much about socialism itself, or any other ideology for that matter.
This is because the revolution that I am always pointing to here is necessarily non-ideological in nature.
It is interesting how the state always seeks to capitalize on whatever moral panics are going on at the present time. The biggest moral panics at present are arguably illegal immigration (for the Red Tribe), guns (for the Blue Tribe), opioids and “sex trafficking” (for both tribes). Immigrants are generally included under the umbrella of the Blue Tribe, and gun owners under the umbrella of the Red Tribe, and therefore have certain shields available. But drug users (except pot heads) and sex workers are not included in either tribe and therefore among the most easy targets for the state.
By Sarah N. Lynch, Lisa Lambert
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement agencies have seized the sex marketplace website Backpage.com as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a posting on the Backpage website on Friday.
By Danny Haiphong
Black Agenda Report
“Anti-imperialism to me means supporting nations in their struggle against my government’s violent and exploitative influence.”
This week I spoke with Randi Nord. Nord is a Detroit-based journalist and activist. She is the co-founder of Geopolitics Alert. Her pieces have also appeared in MintPress News. We discussed anti-imperialism and its relevancy to some of the more pressing questions of the period, especially in lieu of the ongoing US-led wars in Syria and Yemen.
DH: Tell me a little about yourself and the genesis of your political development.
Glad to see someone actually notices this.
By Zaid Jilani
The Intercept
n 2004, then-Senator Barack Obama wowed the country with an address at the Democratic National Convention designed to unite the country and tear down partisan divides.
“Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,” he said. “Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.”
He talked about how in so-called blue states they “worship an awesome God” and about how people have gay friends in red states. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” he said to thunderous applause.
Some interesting observations from Troy Southgate on why the Left fails through co-optation, and why the Western world is drifting leftward culturally even as state-capitalism is tightening its grip.
“The concluding paragraph in ‘Cultures of Post-War British Fascism’ (Routledge, 2015), by John E. Richardson of Loughborough University, in a piece titled ´Cultural Marxism and the British National Party: Towards a Transnational Discourse´, is a sinister reminder of the crass naivety and inverted fascism of those who control political and historical discourse within modern academia. Personally, I do not even accept that ´Cultural Marxism´ exists, because whilst the Frankfurt School has clearly played a major role in the perceived subversion of traditional values and institutions, it has actively de-railed and co-opted Marxism to the extent that such concepts have been totally nullified and, thus, enabled the globalist establishment to facilitate its on-going policy of political, social and financial control.
Republicans and Democrats disagree about the role that the government should play in providing social services. The former insists that it should be smaller and intervene less in the economy. In contradistinction, the latter maintains that the public interest would be better served by a higher degree of government involvement in our institutions.
The Republicans are more likely to excoriate politicians who pioneer inefficient government programs than the Democrats, but they stop far short from conceding that all forms of taxation constitute theft.
Even the most intransigent conservatives will staunchly assert that taxation for some government services is legitimate. Who could argue that the government perpetrates theft by taxing all citizens to build schools, roads and police departments?
The problem with this rationale is it involves an element of coercion that could be construed as a violation of individual rights. This engenders a peculiar asymmetry in our moral outlook that creates a double-standard. Both orthodox schools of political thought prohibit individuals from coercing each other in such a manner but allow the government to do so.
From a leftist who learned the hard way.
I would actually argue that all modern political philosophy is leftist, at least from John Locke onward. So if you’re not a throne and altar traditionalist, a religious theocrat, or a revolutionary rightist (fascist, national socialist), then you’re a leftist. I’d argue this woman is liberal-leftist as opposed to a totalitarian-socialist or a progressive secular theocrat.
